Here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Sarah Palin just came on after an intro from Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Sarah’s in rare form. The first thing she says of Cruz is that as a Texan he “chews up barbed wire and spits out rust.”

Then on gun control she says Barack Obama wants background checks, but “he should have had a background check,” which gets a rise from the crowd.

Now she says we don’t have leadership coming out of Washington, but reality television. That’s a little weird from someone who’s a walking reality TV show.

Next she talks about how the GOP finished second in the recent election. She uses that old line about how “being second on a dogsled team means the view never changes – and it ain’t pretty.”

Now she’s on a spiel about how bad the middle class of the constitution. “It costs nearly 100 bucks to fill your truck.” Good line, and energy should have been a major part of the Romney campaign, particularly that line of Obama about how “electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket” if he’s elected.

Why didn’t the Romney crowd emphasize this? I wish Sarah would say more on that. Now she’s babbling on about “leadership,” something more appropriate to liberals than conservatives. We conservatives don’t need leaders. We just need pols to leave us alone.

She gets a huge round of applause by saying of Obama, “Step away from the Teleprompter and do your job.”

You could say that about any politician.

She just mentioned “leadership that deigns to be concerned about the little people” again common liberal/populist rhetoric. But she gets away with it. She also gets away with pronouncing “deigns” as “deens.”

She then goes into a joke about how she bought her husband a rifle for Christmas and he bought her a gun rack for the pickup. “He got the rifle and I got the rack,” she concludes – thus becoming the first politician to get away with a tit joke at a conservative convention.

As the crowd goes crazy, she pulls out a Big Gulp from behind the dais. She takes a big sip and makes a joke about Michael Bloomberg.

Now she’s on to how the Republican Party should recruit more people:

“It’s time we all stop preaching to the choir and let’s grow!”

True enough, but early in the speech she made fun of all the pundits talking about how the GOP should do just that.

Now she’s hitting “crony capitalists.”

“If you don’t have a lobbyist in Washington, then you’re not at the table; you’re on the menu.”

Good line. She’s not got another good line, this one about how conservatives have to be for free enterprise, not big business. Actually a good point. It seems she’s learned a thing or two from Ron and Rand Paul. She plugged Rand earlier.

Then she takes a shot at Karl Rove, saying he should head back to Texas – and also cut the price for his services – a reference to his ridiculous projection that Romney was going to win easily despite the polls showing him trailing in all the swing states.

She finishes up with some more zinger lines and gets a huge round of applause.

This woman may not be a natural politician but she sure is a natural comedian.

Much of the crowd fliters out. They’re missing a much more important female politician. The legendary Phyllis Schlafly comes on and gives her classic no-nonsense speech.

Prior panelists have been overwhelmingly in favor of what they term “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Phyllis informs the crowd that “comprehensive is a synonym for amnesty and so is reform.”

That’s certainly true. However you feel about the issue, you have to confess that permitting people who arrived illegally to stay represents amnesty.

Interestingly, Phyllis also gets in a plug for Rand Paul. This is a fascinating trend. The old-fashioned, America-first conservatism of the 1930s is clearly making a comeback over the “neo” conservatism that triumphed in the postwar years.